Twins

[auntiemabelisveryable]

I've name changed for this ...

We've been approved for some while and have been awaiting a match.

We have been contacted about twins (pre-school).

I've been advised that adopting twins is lovely (because of their close bond) and also difficult (as they can fight like cat and dog)!

As far as I'm concerned, this is the same with any siblings.

Am I missing something as I can't see any obvious issues?

Twins get treated differently to other siblings. They get identified as 'the twins' rather than ask 'John' and 'Sally'. Even when you tell people that they are called 'John' and 'Sally' (ie boy and girl) you get asked if they are identical. Establishing an independent identity as a sibling is harder as a twin as they are the same age so in the same class. They are frequently more openly compared, contrasted and judged for these reasons.

I say this based on the experience of being having several siblings including a set of twins. My mother would add that parenting twins is harder than parenting children of different ages, especially at the nappy stage and again at the out of school activity stage. My brother (one of the twins) would argue his after school activities took a back seat to everyone else's.

Additional things to consider with adopting twins would be the added impact of the trauma bond along side attachment issues, especially taking into account if they were fostered or looked after together or separately at any point.

Different experience from @ifchocolatewerecelery here.

In my family all twins went to the same class in primary school and mostly did the same activities (all same sex twins), which made parents' life much easier. Less bussing around, homework done together, etc. Since both children are the same age, everyone can play the same games, has the same bed time, can watch the same movies and knows each other's/ shares friends, which also simplifies matters. Sw might want to hear more about how you will make sure both develop their own identity, but we have 4 sets of twins in my family and that has never been an issue. They all know who they are and are doing fine. ;-)

For adopted twins, being in the same class can be advantageous. It gave my kids a sense of safety and was a protective factor eg. from bullying. Most likely one child will be academically stronger and you will need to find an explanation for that for the one who is not as strong and support them in their strengths.

This is a long way down the road, but bear in mind that your children will most likely leave home at the same time. That can be tough, if there are no other children in the home.

I agree about asking about trauma bonds and if there was a family favourite, how they play together, who is dominant etc. (as with any siblings).

A friend and husband adopted identical girls she said it’s been the best thing ever. Must admit I am quite jealous🤗 Good luck!

Thanks so much for all your helpful comments. Much appreciated!

This reminded me of a conversation with our SW when we were going through the approval process. We had to say how many children we hoped to be approved for. We said one but if twins came up we'd like to be considered! (I've always loved the idea of twins!) Our SW said she didn't think twins came up often! Good luck with your matching!

(I’m an adoptee who hopes to adopt in the future, but currently has young birth children.) Im sure lots of what I say, you’ll have thought through already so feel free to discount it. 🙂 I don’t personally have twins, but if the twins will be your first children, I think the initial impact would be greater. I’d be thinking about the age they’re functioning at and any developmental delay. With older children, they way they ‘need’ you can be expressed differently to a younger a child and you can do different activities with each. With very young children, when they need you they can be all over you. There’s can be lots of physically clinging, pulling hair, hitting out in frustration etc. depending on age. It’s two young children needing your complete attention all the time, so those first weeks could feel like an even bigger, more intense change.

The disturbed sleep can be intense. My birth daughter is up regularly at the moment between 3-5am, which is a developmentally normal phase, but with two (and two who had a difficult time and are in a new place) that could intensify as they’re bouncing off the other, so I’d have plans for if they both wake at the same time. Equally, their presence could help the other one sleep better, but it’s worth having a plan in place for if they keep each other up. Also, of course, this would be similar for any siblings who are both pre-schoolers.

My children have a 6y age gap, so I understand why doing similar activities with young children of similar age can be a draw, but I’d say it makes it harder to carve out individual time because their routines are the same. You have to make the time because one isn’t at school while the other isn’t etc.

I think one focus with any young sibling set would be how to spend time individually with each, to help them attach. Twins can be lumped together a lot and so a real focus on identifying and encouraging each of their personal interests would be good. I’d probably also be thinking about trauma bonds and how they might be affected by these, as a pp said.

Otherwise, I think I’d be looking at how you cope in different stages. For example, the impact of the teenage years with two children of an identical age potentially displaying traumatised behaviours. When I think about my own teenage years, I think this stage would have been even harder for my parents if I had a sibling with a close relationship and if potentially some behaviours fed off each other. For school, similarly, if they need extra support, it’s two children to fight for simultaneously if they both develop issues at the same time.

The last thing would be contact, so if they have any contact with family members, what impact is that likely to have? If, for example, you put a lot into helping them develop as individuals but then at contact they’re seen only as a single unit. Obviously they may well not be, but might be something I’d look into alongside how their roles in the birth family played put up to now.

Wishing you all the best with matching if you go ahead ☺️

What wonderful news!

There are lots of great comments above. My response below is based on knowing some fostered and adopted twins, as well as working with parents of twin and twins themselves. Forgive the stream of consciousness approach , but hopefully some of it is helpful.Below I've put a list of things that i dont think have been mentioned above that I would consider if I were adopting twins, down to some pretty granular details:

-One of my friends has parented twins and she said that one big thing to consider is that you need double everything, all the time at the same time, which means that hand me downs aren't really a thing. Financially it can be a grind, school trips are always double, new uniforms, new school shoes etc.

-Parents evenings are a stretch because you either need one parent per child or to attend double the appointments- fine in primary but in secondary you often have 7 or 8 appointments per child and sometimes they are not the same teachers with very little scope to influence that.

-I would second the comparison being a real concern- especially if their needs are very different. Whether you treat them as individuals or not, lots of other places will treat them as a unit, so it is worth co sidering how to mitigate for that.

• Also (and this is just speculation) depending on how old they are, it may also be that they are very bonded with each other and don't rely on you quite as much, which may have some impact on typical attachment work. Are there therapists supported by the adoption support fund in your local area who specialise or even have experience with adopted twins?

-i would be thinking about being conscious of which twin "goes first" each time, into the bath, car, given items and food etc. If one particular one, why? Does it give a subconscious message, and what is that message? Is that helpful or harmful to them in the long and short term- if it is routine based then ostensibly you should try to maintain it for consistency, but if it promotes superiority, how will you amend it?

• how will birthday celebrations work? Together, separately? Separate cakes or the same? What about friends lists? Some people have two separate birthdays weekends where they do separate things as they get older for each twin so that the focus is on each individual child.

• dressing them- similarly? Differently? Why? (I saw a thing recently that some adoptive parents helped siblings to bond by dressing them similarly, because people looked at them as though they were siblings, and treated them as such despite them looking different) do you want that or the opposite?

• Childcare- do you have people in your support network who will always support with two children?

• do they depend on each other for emotional support? What happens if that breaks down or is unavailable? How would you cope with that?

• will they have different stuff, or will it all be interchangeable? Will that trigger any of the identity issues? If you have stuff separately, how will you know its theirs- could you consider a clothes stamp/label, would you have them use thematically different colours/styles? If it's the same, I would consider about introducing and fixing narratives about what is and isn't appropriate to share with others outside the family, especially as they get older. For example, you can use your sisters water bottle at home if you want, but at school you need to use your own and you can't share with your friends at school because at school we all use our own separate one. Kids in general at school seem to become either possessive or indiscriminate r.e. belongings.

• who was the older twin, and do they let this define them? What will you do to work on the feelings on both sides?

• can you tell their baby photos apart? Hwo does that fit into their life story?

• how will you support with managing friendships, if one child has a best friend and the other doesn't? Ditto girlfriends and boyfriends later on in life.

-have they ever been treated differently and why? How have foster carers treated them? Were they exotified because they were twins? It does make them noticeable and sometimes for the wrong reason. Even down to people asking whether they can read each others minds, or people commenting on how striking they are etc.

• what policy does your primary/secondary school have for twins? Most will deliberately try to keep them separate, will that fit with your trauma informed parenting? How flexible are they with that? Do you agree with them?

• do you have any books or stories that talk about the twin bond in a positive way? Or any that talk about the negative aspects of being twins to open up conversations they may not have ever been allowed to express? From memory, books like the wind singer trilogy has boy/girl twin protagnists, but not very many mainstream kids or teen books do that I can think of. Definitely worth researching.

• along the same lines, think about the films and book representation- are twins shown as comedic (tweedledum and tweedledee), or creepy (that horror film with them in the hotel, the shining maybe?), or peppy (the Olsen twins). Could that open up a conversation? It's a typical literary trope to demonstrate how different people are affected by nature or nurture, but could be triggering questions in their minds. Some schools still use Blood Brothers on their curriculum for example, where a mother gives away one of her twins to be adopted because she can't afford both. It has a tragic ending (spoiler) but it might raise some questions if they study it at school. How would you deal with that and what questions would you ask of the teachers to mitigate for it. I would be reading all the set texts at primary and secondary so that I could know what was coming up and how to deal with the key themes. Adoption is usually significantly over represented anyway because it allows a child protagonist the freedom from parental control to go and have "adventures" but is often done without any critical thought on the actual level of trauma, but this is pronounced when there are twins involved. They may resonate with one of the characters or wonder if they were adopted because two was "too much to handle", what if there had only been one, etc.

• if you are not a twin, you won't truly understand what it is like, and so can you sit with that? How will their experience of the world be different? Could be positive and negative. I know its not quite the same as other marginalised groups, but it does make them different and noticeable, which shapes how they move through the world.

• how will you deal with stupid comments from others? (There will be some daft plonker that you least expect who has weird ideas about twins. Great aunty margaret might just come out with a stunning comment about the Kray twins that ruins Christmas dinner for example) Will that change depending on the situation? How would you deal with that, publically or privately? Why?

• are there any medical concerns to be thinking about? Definitely not my area of expertise, but I believe that multiple births tend to have lower birth weight and more traumatic deliveries, so did that affect birth mother bonding with them, or the care they received afterwards? E.g were there any hospitalizations away from birth mum, or delayed growth etc?

I hope these have been helpful- there are lots of things to consider, and from my conversations with parents of twins I think it could be very tricky indeed- rewarding for all the reasons pps have mentioned, but it will require some thought, especially when combined with reactions to trauma and any other intersectional factors to be considered (e.g race and gender, for example), which might amplify some of the behaviours and feelings a "typical" twin sibling group might have. I think it could be very positive, but would be even more so if you think carefully about each aspect of it to maximise the benefits and mitigate for the negatives for each child.

Please do update if it is appropriate!

I want to add my adopted primary aged daughter's experience of twins as there is a boy/girl pair in her class. I forgot to put this is my original reply.

She and therefore presumably many other children in their class are aware that having a twin sibling is not the same as having an older/younger sibling in a different class.

When one of them is ill the other will try to explain why they aren't in school to the best of their ability so I've chosen to have a couple of conversations with their mum to clarify what's actually going on. In your situation it means that there is room for potential conflicts when one twin shares personal information the other is not comfortable with around their birth family.

My daughter occasionally wishes she were a twin and I suspect it's to do with the children are treated in school. If she were a twin however, she'd equally be likely to express frustration at being a twin because she hates anything that marks her out as different to her classmates.

Thanks for all your detailed comments.

That's certainly some food for tonight!

My concern would be whether they have had a proper assessment of whether they should be placed together, rather than an automatic 'of course twins should be kept together'.

Trauma bonds are a real concern, and can prevent siblings from moving on to more healthy ways of relating. Two children of a similar age, and a similar desperate craving for the same sort of love and attention, could get very destructive. My daughters were 8 years apart, and still struggled hugely with the other getting attention, even if it wasn't the type of attention they would have chosen (I have fond - not! - memories of DD1 insisting I get her exactly the same presents as DD2, even though they were toys that she had no interest in playing with and I was going to spend an equal amount of time and money choosing her presents that she would use/like... and as for the time DD2 thought DD1's pork chop at tea time was larger, and screamed so loudly and so long that a lovely neighbour came to rescue her from the intruder who must be attacking her... 😬luckily they hadn't called the police...)

But equally, the sibling bonds (twins or not) can also be a real strength and support, which is the case for my two (now we're over the worst!). You can potentially plan your routine and activities specifically for their age - assuming they are developmentally at the same place.

I think every case needs to be assessed individually, without any assumption that siblings should be kept together or that they shouldn't be kept together. And that applies to twins as much (more?!) as any other sibling.

Thank you again for all your helpful comments!

Fairness is a bigger issue. You always have to keep in mind that you will need two of everything when you make decisions. My husband struggled with that. He would give a child an ice-lollie, then the other child came around the corner and he realised we only had one left. That is the case with all siblings of course, but there is less flexibility because twins are the same age and expect the same. This also applies to chores and can be amplified by trauma and favouritism in the birth family. I pretty much had to split raisins until it was established that we would always be fair.

Main concern I would have (I have a friend who adopted twins and it was a big issue for her) is that twins are more easily identifiable. Obviously it will depend on where BF live and how dangerous they are, but it has caused her problems